Burnley, David,and Matsuji Tajima.
Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1994.
An annotated bibliography of 1,335 studies, arranged chronologically (1865-1900) within three broad categories: Early Middle English, Later Middle English, and dissertations. Includes studies in which "linguistic description has been used to cast…
Stillwell, Gardiner.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 54 (1955): 693-99. Rpt. in Studies by Members of the English Department, University of Illinois, in Memory of John Jay Parry. Essay Index Reprint Series. [Urbana]: University of Illinois Press, 1968, pp. 212-18.
Identifies predecessors in Old French fabliaux for courtly details, diction, locutions, and situations in MilT and RvT, helping to create comic irony by contrast between "elegance and 'harlotrye.'"
Masui, Michio.
Studies in English Literature, English Number (1960): 1-36.
Describes and assesses Chaucer's depictions of the expressions and psychology of love in TC, attending to diction, tone, style, and various uses and developments of the conventions of French and Italian love poetry. Focuses on the poet's successful…
Chaucer developed a poetic idiom of ubiquitous equivocal effects and prevarication both in the comments of his persona and in the voices of his speakers. Poems touched on include TC, PardT, NPT, MerT, and LGW.
Jimura, Akiyuki.
Bulletin of the Faculty of of the School Education (Hiroshima University) 16 (1994): 1-8.
A sociolinguistic exploration of Criseyde's grammar, literacy, pronunciation, and verbosity, considered in relation to the vocabulary and syntax of fourteenth-century upper-class women.
Jimura, Akiyuki.
Kiichiro Nakatani et al., eds. English and English Teaching: A Festschrift in Honour of Hisashi Takahashi and Jiro Igarashi (Hiroshima University: Department of English, Faculty of the School of Education, 1993), pp. 187-97.
Jimura compares the vocabulary of Criseyde to that of Troilus and Pandarus, seeking to define characteristics of aristocratic women's language in the fourteenth century.
Jimura, Akiyuki.
Nobuyuki Yuasa et al., eds. Essays on English Language and Literature in Honour of Michio Kawai (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1993), pp. 53-60.
Jimura compares the vocabulary of Criseyde to that of Troilus and Pandarus, seeking to define characteristics of aristocratic women's language in the fourteenth century.
Examines historical and symbolic features of the costumes of select Ellesmere portraits (Squire, Knight, Merchant, Prioress, Monk, Parson, Cook, and Chaucer), arguing that the sequence is an "informed response" to CT, especially GP. Chaucer is…
Eliason, Norman E.
Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1972.
Evaluates the "style and structure" of Chaucer's poetry, exploring the interaction of pronunciation and versification and the limitations of medieval and modern rhetorics for describing and gauging Chaucer's techniques. Includes scansion of lines and…
Horobin, Simon.
In Laurel J. Brinton and Alexander Bergs, eds. Middle English. The History of English, no. 3. (Boston, Mass.: De Gruyter, 2017), pp. 293-305.
Addresses the status of Chaucer's language in the development of a standard written English, explores grammatical differences between his dialect and "present-day" English, and clarifies the difficulties of understanding the innovativeness of his…
Bellhouse, D. R.
Franklin, J.
International Statistical Review 65 (1997): 73-85.
Tallies possible evidence of "early probability calculus" in Middle English literature and its lexicon, including discussion of examples from John Gower, John Lydgate, and PardT. In the latter, line 6.653, chances in dicing are "events which had the…
Social and legal history of violence against women in the medieval family, including discussion of case studies. Comments briefly on MerT and ClT, and discusses at greater length (pp. 230-36) WBP which indicates that "failure to internalise and…
Shinsuke, Ando.
Studies in English Literature, English number (1970): 63-74.
Adduces examples of formulaic phrasing, diction, and rhymes in fragment A of Rom as evidence of Chaucer's familiarity with native English literature; also shows where such evidence appears in his later works.
Cannon, Christopher.
Christopher Cannon and Maura Nolan, eds. Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann (Cambridge: Brewer, 2011), pp. 25-40.
In their attention to language as "an active part of social life," the FranT, NPT, and ManT constitute a language group whose tales are deeply rhetorical in the sense that they look closely at how language works as "an entity, process or phenomenon,"…
Sudo, Jun.
Nobuyuki Yuasa et al., eds. Essays on English Language and Literature in Honour of Michio Kawai (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1993), pp. 19-27.
Surveys stylistic characteristics of KnT including abbreviation, parallel expression, repetition of synonyms, alliteratation, catalogs, similes, and archaisms.
The fourteenth-century poem here edited is held to support the view that Chaucer's depiction of the Franklin in GP is straightforward and favorable, not ironic or satiric.
Carruthers, Mary J.
Chaucer Review 17 (1983): 221-34.
Some medieval readers or hearers would have considered ClT incredible or cruel. The Clerk agrees with the Wife that gentilesse means "trouthe," fidelity and integrity.
Discusses church treatises, didactic works, and books of advice to daughters, or of clerical instruction to women, and mirrors for princesses, to reveal medieval images of women: the virgin, the coquette, the wife and mother, the ruler, the worker.
Coss, Peter R.
Phoenix Mill, Gloucestershire : Sutton, 1998.
Defines the late-medieval idea of a "gentilwoman," its evolution, its relation to male gentility, and its representations in medieval art and literature. Briefly considers Chaucer's Prioress as a depiction of the "behavioural traits" of a medieval…
Historical novel set in late-medieval England. Includes a character modeled on the Wife of Bath: Alyson, who owns a bathhouse/brothel in Southwark. Originally published as "The Brewer's Tale," North Sydney: Harlequin, 2014; 584 pp.
Epstein, Robert.
Modern Philology 113 (2015) 17-48.
The exchanges of goods and services in ShT are often read following Bourdieu's theory that self-interest motivates all human actions. This essay claims that such analyses do not take into account other motivating factors clearly present in the tale,…
Robertson, Kellie.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Five chapters explore the "effects of labor laws" on vernacular writing in late medieval England: chronicles, anonymous dream visions, LGW, the Paston letters, and morality plays. Robertson focuses on interactions between theories of labor and…
Linder, Amnon.
Studi Medievali, 3rd ser., 18 (1977): 315-55.
Surveys the availability of manuscripts of John of Salisbury's "Policraticus" and allusions to this work among theologians, jurists, and political writers of the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. Comments on uses of the text by various…
